Supporting Positive Behavior Through Natural Development and Social Learning

Running head: DISTRICT- AND SCHOOL-WIDE NATURAL BULLYING PREVENTION

Supporting Positive Behavior through Natural Development and Social Learning

A Paper Presented in Fulfillment Of the Requirements of

PSY8338 – Child and Adolescent Psychology for School Psychologists

Addam Brown

December, 2013

Capella University

Introduction

Since every school is different because of the culture it creates due to the individual children and their own cultures, there is no one system, program, and/or intervention that will work for every school.  With this in mind let us discuss the need for our schools’ and school district’s issue with bullying. Much like most schools in the nation, bullying and school violence is a real issue throughout public, charter, and private institutions. To effectively control and change the bullying issues and create a safe and violence free environments, the system that is in placed needs to be embedded into the behavioral constructs of what is expected when attending school. The expectations should be a comprehensive, multi-tiered behavioral framework that establishes a positive environment naturally setting high academic and behavioral standards. The program needs to encompass all individual students and their needs, including ethnic and cultural minorities, students with disabilities, and gifted students at each grade level from K-12-year 3 and goes beyond the classroom to include all school sponsored activities. It may also be prudent to suggest an out of school policy in more academically advanced school to simulate the professional association or career that would require to be a prominent member of socially appropriate society outside of their workplace. The program needs to include a data-based decision process to identify needs of individual schools, analyze issues, give clear evidence-based practices in delivery of instruction and implementation of interventions, and monitor the progress of the continuously improving program.

Successful Programs

Two meta-analysis research articles discuss different violence intervention and prevention programs from United States and international schools that are successful. In their analysis, both recognize successful programs as those that decrease academic failures and problem behaviors and increase positive participation in learning (Merrell, Gueldner, Ross, & Isava, 2008; Farrington & Ttofi, 2009). Merrell, Gueldner, Ross, and Isava (2008), found programs lead to changes in attitudes and self-perceptions or those who are victims, perpetrators, and bystanders who allow the situation to happen. Farrington and Ttofi (2009), found that no matter how successful the program is in one school, it great for that context but may not be in another context. Successful programs are those selected that identify and point to resolve the specific type of school violence and bullying of the specific school.

The students are not the only individuals that are affected by school bullying and violence. Part of those that are affected are the parents, teachers, staff, and administration when just one student is bullied. The academic environment needs to be safe for those that instruct, assist in instruction, help the school function, student support professionals, and the parents of each student. When a child becomes a victim or perpetrator of bullying, they create an unsafe and uncomfortable academic environment that does not allow an optimal opportunity for students to learn. This includes the bystanders and those who are not involved in an incident. The parents of each of these students may recognize the unsafe environment which will create stress on each student that is unneeded leading to lower academic and behavioral performances.

The “Base” or District Wide Intervention Program

Our district will be using as base prevention and intervention system from an Olweus prevention program for recognition and an evidence-based naturalistic approach to prevention and intervention for policy creation centered on promoting positive relationships and school environments. This naturalistic approach for intervention is based on Vygotsky’s (1986) scaffolding theory of learning, applied in a social learning context following the results of not following expectation based on developmental-systematic theory (Ford and Lerner, 1992). This theory looks at the relationship between all levels of Olweus’ bully ladder and creating positive relationships specifically between the perpetrator and the victim by creating positive relationships between the bully and the possible/actual defenders and removing them from relationships that are supporting the negative relationships, the perpetrators friends/supporters (Olweus, 2005).

Bullying interventions don't have to be built around cheesy gimmicks full of clichés, or celebrities spouting rhetoric. Organic interventions can be fostered and reinforced through Vygotskyian-like scaffolding by organizing the classroom's social architecture in such a way as to provide individual students with positive social support; understanding the relationships involved and way students are accepted by their peers, or "fit in," allows for students to practice what they learn in a social structure in which they are accepted. In order to create such an environment teachers must maintain control of the social organization within the classroom, for instance: when it comes time to do group projects, instead of allowing students to choose groups for themselves and inevitably ostracizing some and reinforcing exclusionary cliques, the teacher should assign the teams. This doesn't just help include those students who may otherwise be left out, it can also help to provide an appropriate channel for those student with natural leadership abilities, who might otherwise turn those skills to violence and domination, to use healthy and productive ways. Peer support intervention has been turning researchers' heads, so to speak: Lynn, Hawkins, Pepler, and Craig (2001) made note of the effectiveness of peer support through natural observations and Salmivalli, Kaukiainen, Voeten, and Sinsammal (2005) made it the focus of their research into the natural prevention of bullying.

Natural bullying interventions can also be implemented in the home and community at large through the creation of an environment in which there is warmth and continual positive involvement with adults and by creating an overall positive regard for everyone, parents can do their part in the prevention and intervention of bullying. Such an environment allows the community to react to antisocial and unacceptable behavior in a non-physical and non-hostile manner, because the child is more willing to accept input from adults when they suggest behavior modification (Olweus, 2005). However, it is important that the perpetrators of bullying aren't the sole focus of natural interventions, by providing support to those individuals who practice socially acceptable behavior and assist their peers, we reinforce those behaviors. By showing public acceptance of and rewarding and supporting positive behaviors, the scaffolding put is in place to encourage behavior that helps others. Teachers also use scaffolding when instructing students in social acceptance through restorative interventions such as having the offender ask questions like, "How would I feel if someone treated me that way?", and allowing the victim to explain how they were affected by the bullying. Bullying is a social problem, a relational problem, and it requires relationship solutions. Encouraging and reinforcing the development of the relationship capacity in children and adolescents allows us to lay the foundation for continued growth throughout their lives and enriches the community as a whole. This in turn provides a healthy social context in which the next generation can build their relationships. Bullying starts in the primary grade levels with the separation of natural leaders, part of prevention is to make sure that the competiveness is kept honest and purely academic, including physically academia, i.e. Physical education and school sponsored extra-curricular activities. As the students develop into teenagers and enter secondary education, the social, verbal, and physical violence becomes harsher as they try to develop an understanding about concepts that require more maturity, such as relationships and sexuality, family stressors (i.e. parental divorce, money issues, medical issues, death, addiction, etc.), and added pressures of non-school sponsored extra-curricular activities, such as work. Teenagers due begin to think more abstractly and require to be accepted by a social group that recognizes their independence. Using this natural developmental process, scaffolding in social learning can naturally change the behaviors of individuals by structuring what the students do and with whom.